| --- |
| license: mit |
| task_categories: |
| - text-classification |
| - sentence-similarity |
| language: |
| - en |
| tags: |
| - dogs |
| - adoption |
| - shelter |
| - petfinder |
| - animals |
| - pets |
| size_categories: |
| - 10K<n<100K |
| pretty_name: US Shelter Dogs (PetFinder Snapshot) |
| --- |
| |
| # 🐾 US Shelter Dogs — PetFinder Adoption Dataset |
|
|
| A cleaned and enriched dataset of **49,036 real adoptable dogs** from US shelters and rescues, originally collected from the PetFinder API on September 20, 2019. |
|
|
| ## Dataset Description |
|
|
| Each row represents a single adoptable dog with: |
| - **Rich text descriptions** written by shelters/rescues (median 708 characters) |
| - **Breed information** (216 unique breeds, primary + secondary + mixed flag) |
| - **Demographics**: age class, sex, size, coat type |
| - **Compatibility flags**: good with children, dogs, cats |
| - **Training/needs**: house trained, special needs, vaccination status |
| - **Location**: city and state |
| - **PetFinder URL**: direct link to the dog's original listing |
|
|
| ### `match_text` Column |
| A pre-built combined text field that merges the dog's structured metadata (name, breed, age, size, compatibility, training status) with their free-text description. Designed for semantic similarity matching with sentence-transformers. |
| |
| ## Source |
| |
| Originally collected by [Amber Thomas](https://pudding.cool/author/amber-thomas/) for The Pudding's essay ["Finding Forever Homes"](https://pudding.cool/2019/10/shelters/) (October 2019). Raw data from [the-pudding/data](https://github.com/the-pudding/data/tree/master/dog-shelters). |
| |
| Data was collected via PetFinder's V2 API (`get-animals`) for all US states + DC. Descriptions were obtained via the V1 API. This dataset represents a single-day snapshot of all adoptable dogs on PetFinder. |
| |
| ## Cleaning Applied |
| |
| 1. Removed dogs without descriptions (8,705 rows) and very short descriptions < 30 chars (439 rows) |
| 2. Dropped administrative columns (`declawed`, `stateQ`, `accessed`, `type.x`, `type.y`, `org_id`, `contact_zip`, `contact_country`, `status`, `species`) |
| 3. Created `match_text` combining structured metadata + description for embedding |
| 4. Standardized boolean and compatibility columns |
|
|
| ## Column Reference |
|
|
| | Column | Type | Description | |
| |--------|------|-------------| |
| | `id` | int | Unique PetFinder ID | |
| | `url` | string | PetFinder listing URL | |
| | `name` | string | Dog's name | |
| | `breed_primary` | string | Primary breed (216 unique) | |
| | `breed_secondary` | string | Secondary breed (if mixed) | |
| | `breed_mixed` | bool | Whether mixed breed | |
| | `age` | string | Baby, Young, Adult, Senior | |
| | `sex` | string | Male, Female, Unknown | |
| | `size` | string | Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large | |
| | `coat` | string | Short, Medium, Long, Wire, Curly, Hairless | |
| | `env_children` | string | yes / no / unknown | |
| | `env_dogs` | string | yes / no / unknown | |
| | `env_cats` | string | yes / no / unknown | |
| | `house_trained` | bool | House trained status | |
| | `special_needs` | bool | Has special needs | |
| | `description` | string | Full shelter-written description | |
| | `match_text` | string | Combined metadata + description for embedding | |
| | `contact_city` | string | Shelter city | |
| | `contact_state` | string | Shelter state | |
|
|
| ## Usage |
|
|
| Used by the [Shelter Dog Personality Matcher](https://huggingface.co/spaces/meganariley/shelter-dog-matcher) Gradio Space — a quiz-based app that matches users to adoptable dogs using sentence-transformer semantic similarity. |
|
|
| ## Statistics |
|
|
| - **49,036** dogs with descriptions |
| - **216** unique primary breeds |
| - **Age**: Adult (57%), Young (33%), Baby (19%), Senior (9%) |
| - **Size**: Medium (61%), Large (32%), Small (24%), Extra Large (2%) |
| - **Top breeds**: Pit Bull Terrier, Labrador Retriever, Chihuahua, Mixed Breed, Terrier |
| - **All 50 US states + DC** represented |
|
|
| ## License |
|
|
| The original data was collected from the publicly available PetFinder API. Released under MIT license for research and educational purposes. |
|
|
